My friend Tara just posted the link to this article on Facebook and it is SO right on for me. I made a deal with myself that I would hire a photographer at least once a year to capture our family. And I have kept that deal. It is one of the only deals I have ever kept with myself. Do I like having my photo taken? Heck NO. Do I feel beautiful in front of the lens? Hell NO. But I do it because it is important. As the author Allison Tate so eloquently states in this article, I do it for this reason:
Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.
Let's not let our kids think we do not deserve to be photographed. Let's stand in front of the lens with love and pride and show our kids how much we love them and how much we love ourselves. Even of we have to fake it a little bit.